A PRESENTATION

ON

MESOPOTAMIAN SETTLEMENT

PRESENTED BY:-•KUNWAR FAIZAN KHAN

•MOHAMMAD ASAD•SAROSH IMAM

INTRODUCTION• Mesopotamia is a Greek word that

means the land between two rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Around 3500 B.C small agricultural pottery making and cloth weaving in villages were transmitted through societies of cities.

• Initial settlement on the northern plains, with movement out to the south and west from 6000 BC.

• Mesopotamia does not refer to any particular civilization. Over the course of several millennia, many civilizations developed, collapsed, and were replaced in this region including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians.

GEOGRAPHY• Alluvial plains surrounded on two

sides by better watered mountainous zones.  Summer drought and winter rains although the lowland plains receive minimal rainfall.  Where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers join, the land is flat and there are many marshy areas.

This unecompassed spaced presented no natural barrier to invaders and indeed there was continual warfare in the region.

Areas near rivers protected from flooding - elevated above the river.Within reach of irrigation water and the closer they were to the river the greater their productivity. 

Arabian Platform

Zagros Mountains

JaziraPlateau

100 km

Euphrates

Amarah

Basrah

Kut

Tigris

Samarra

Ramadi

Najaf

Samawah

Nasyriyah

Baghdad

Shatt al Arab

Persian Gulf

Karun Fan

Wadi Fan

Dyala Fan

Diwanyiah

EUROPE

AFRICA

ASIA

ArabianSea

Red Sea

CaspianSea Aral

Sea

Black S ea

Mediterranean Sea

500 km

Mesopotamia

Fallujah

alluvial plain

the zone of marshes

and lakes ('Ahwar')

estuary

alluvial fans

areas outside

Mesopotamian depression

CLIMATE

• The climate is exceedingly hot, but also very humid - the floods often unpredictable. Mesopotamians were at the mercy of their hostile environment, and believed themselves to be at the mercy of angry and irrational gods. The civilization which produced one of the seven wonders of the ancient world; the hanging gardens of Babylon, also compiled the Epic of Gilgamesh, a pessimistic portrayal of the futile search for immortality and human meaning. City states rose and fell, empires rose and fell, yet the human spirit of the Mesopotamians endured.

FAVOURABLE CONDITION

• Favorable geographic circumstances allowed the peoples of Mesopotamia to evolve from a hunter-gatherer culture to a culture based on husbandry, agriculture, and permanent settlements

• Trade with other regions also flourished, as indicated by the presence in early burial sites of metals and precious stones not locally available

• The rich wildlife was probably what first attracted humans to the Mesopotamian plain. The Southern plain, outside the area of rain, fed agriculture, but, over the millennia, the rivers have laid down thick deposits of very fertile silt and, once water is brought to this soil in ditches and canals, it proves a very attractive area to farmers. For materials such as wood, stone and metals, however, people have to look North and East, to the mountains where the first settlers had originated.

 

COMPARISON WITH EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION

• Civilization developed in Mesopotamia simultaneously with Egypt and the two are often called the 'Fertile Crescent'.

In contrast to the clear cut Nile valley rich valley of Tigris and Euphrates river had ill defined edges. To the south and west the areas faded into the emptiness of Arabia to the west to the north into the fertile plain of Syria and to east foothill merge with Persian and Armenian highland.

SETTLEMENT PATTERN

SETTLEMENT PATTERN Toward the end of the early dynastic period change in settlement

pattern.  Small villages that surrounded the cities disappear and the cities themselves grow in size.  Many of the rural people moved to the new fortified cities such as Uruk. In response to increased inter-city warfare related to the dominance of the secular-based ruling elite.The growing power of a military based authority could have been a crucial factor in the rise of cities and state society

• Neolithic: No substantial settlement in southern Mesopotamia before 5500BC.  From 6000BC to 4000BC settlement expanded from the uplands to incorporate more and more of the Mesopotamian plain.

• The Ubaid :culture expands to northern Mesopotamia, seen by the presence of shared material culture particularly painted pottery.  The Ubaid culture was the foundation culture of Mesopotamia with temple centred settlements that administered exchange.

• Eridu: Eridu established by 5400 BC initially 1-2 ha for the whole site. Located in the extreme south of the Mesopotamian plain. Agriculture around Eridu is dependent on irrigation with wheat, barley, sheep, goats and cattle.  Possible that irrigation management is responsible for the expansion and elaboration of the temple institution.

• Uruk: Uruk earliest urban centre to form a city state. A number of cities develop at the same time.  From the middle of the 4th millennium BC one city in each of the proto-states becomes dominant, the most important being Uruk.  Development concentrated in the south.  The cities have large walls, and mud brick buildings that create tells

• At Uruk a precinct where several temples were adjacent. Temples associated with ziggurats -stepped towers the temples have large storage facilities.  They are the redistributive centers for both agricultural produce and craft goods.  The temple joined by a palace suggesting religion supporting secular control.  Some temples built on a large platform or ziggurat to make them even more impressive.

• Akkadian Empire. The city states only ever unified for short periods of time before they collapsed back to individual cities. Sargon of Agade conquered Kish and spread south from there.  His success led to the fall of the last of the Sumerian rulers and the establishment of the Akkadian empire.  The empire lasted from 2350-2150 BC.  A more integrated system of trade developed controlled by the palace.  But it did not create a long-lived political or economic system

Avulsion is a major river diversion to a lower elevationon the floodplain in which the older channel becomes abandoned and a new channel is initiated.

new channel belt

avulsed channel belt

avulsion point

A

A’

FACTORS AFECTING SETTLEMENT DISTRIBUTION

FACTORS THAT MAY AFFECT SETTLEMENT DISTRIBUTION

• Avulsion rate (abrupt vs gradual abandonment of former channel)

• Avulsion frequency (number of avulsions during certain period of time)

• Avulsion style (reoccupational vs progradational) - reoccupation: flow occupies channel previously existing channel on floodplain (e.g. former major channel or smaller stream channel) - progradation: avulsion belt is deposited following avulsion, followed by formation of a new single channel;

• Channel pattern following avulsion (single channel or multiple channel system)

• Avulsions and resulting channel and sedimentation patterns affected the distribution and sizes of irrigated floodplain, quality of soils, and, therefore, settlement patterns;

• Progradational avulsions with avulsion belts created conditions for local increase in naturally-irrigated area with well-drained soils, generation of food surpluses and population migration toward area possibly leading to appearance of urban settlements;

• During and after abandonment of avulsion belts and multiple channel networks in favor of two-channel or single-channel system, extensive canal construction was required to maintain urban and many rural settlements, eventually abandoned (probably due to increased inefficiency) during mid-Islamic period.

PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS

GOVERNMENT

• Mesopotamia did not have protection from natural boundaries. This led to constant migrations of Indo-European people from the area between the Black and Caspian seas. This lead to a constant migration and 'Cultural Diffusion', or the process where an existing culture adopts the traits of another and the two eventually merge into a new culture. As a result, a strong central government failed to develop in Mesopotamia. The dominant political unit was the 'City-State', a small area surrounding a large, complex city.

ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN CITIES

• Were located on river banks and surrounded by their countryside with ‘corona’ of irrigation agriculture;

• sustaining area per individual was estimated between 0.5-1.5 ha/person;

• daily travel distances from city to countryside did not exceed 3-4 km for maximum agricultural productivity;

URUK

• At the end of the fourth millennium, Uruk was probably the largest city in the world (estimated by some scholars at 400 hectares - the size of Rome in the first century of our Common Era).

• Centered on the important temple (ziggurat) of Inanna (the Great Goddess of Love and War), the city has produced beautiful stone sculptures depicting the temple flocks of sheep and goats

• The city is believed to have been surrounded by moats.

• Of more significance, however, is the discovery at Uruk of the world's earliest recorded writing. Using a reed stylus to draw on tablets of clay, the temple administrators recorded the movement of agricultural produce and out of the temple storerooms including beer, bread and sheep.

• Initially the records took the form of pictures of the objects being counted together with signs representing numerals. Gradually, these pictographs became more stylized and wedge-like or cuneiform (Latin for wedge = cuneus) and adapted to write the local language, or Sumerian.

• The ability to write allowed the Sumerians to record not only lists of goods but also events around them. This development therefore takes us from pre-history to history.

THE CITY OF UR• Around 2350 BCE the southern city states were united into

one empire by Sargon, king of the city of Akkad (also read as Agade). The administration was centralised and the Semitic language Akkadian (named after Sargon's capital) was introduced as the official language in preference to Sumerian. Akkad has not been located but the period produced some astonishing works of art, including fine cylinder seals.

• Sargon and his sons ruled Mesopotamia for 150 years. The Akkadian Empire had collapsed and Mesopotamia was in turmoil. The southern cities began to reassert their independence. Chief among these was the city of Ur. Under king Ur-Nammu, the city established itself as the capital of an empire that rivalled that of the Akkadian rulers.

• Ur-Nammu was a prodigious builder. The most impressive monument of his reign was the ziggurat at Ur. Although similar in shape to the pyramids of Egypt, ziggurats were not tombs but made of solid brickwork.

• Often, as at Ur, three staircases led up one side of the tower to several stages. At the summit was a shrine to the god. `

BABYLONIA• Around 1780 BCE as king of the small town of Babylon, Hammurapi united

Southern Mesopotamia into a single empire.• Hammurapi is best remembered for his code of laws (the famous stela of

Hammurapi is now in the Louvre in Paris). Hammurapi's death caused his empire to fall apart. Despite this, the city of Babylon was to remain the capital of a Southern kingdom

• Sixty years of Babylonian supremacy was threatened during the reign of king Nabonidus, when Mesopotamia was faced with the expansion of yet another eastern power, the Persians. In 539 BCE, the armies of the Persian king Cyrus (a member of the Achaemenid family) marched upon Babylon and captured the city and with it all the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

• This, in effect, brought to an end three thousand years of self-rule in Mesopotamia. While many of the traditions and way of life in the region continued under the new rulers, Mesopotamia was now part of the much greater empire of the Persians which stretched from Egypt to India

• Over the next 200 years the region would see the advance of Greek civilisation and the eventual destruction of the Persian Empire at the hand of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great.

LANGUAGE

• Mesopotamians had one of the first recorded languages.It was invented to keep track of farming and trade.The form of writing, called Pictograms that was used by the Mesopotamians was very simple.

• One mark indicated a number, the other indicated what was being counted. The writing was done by marking wet clay with a reed. Efficient and easy as this was it became much more difficult with higher numbers.

• Gradually this system became out-dated and indograms came into use

PATTERNS IN URBAN PLANNING

• Massive size compared to previous settlements• Complex central administration• Greater concentration of people• Size does not necessarily equal population. there were

space devoted to gardens, grazing land, etc.• Location near rivers in order to control waterway• New urban form--> citadel with closely-linked temple-

palace unit, separated from rest of town by height or walls

• Mesopotamian tradition of seeing universe as square, reflected in ground plans.

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